Significant turnover in a business can slow down productivity, curb your profits, and squelch morale. The more time spent on training new people, the less productive work is getting done. Therefore, you want to make an effort to keep your employees happy. Besides additional compensation (which isn't always possible) there are other ways to attract and hang on to talented people; you could:

• Allow for flexible working hours

• Allow for some telecommuting

• Encourage employee suggestions and feedback—and pay attention to it

• Help with child care

• Encourage and set up social outings

• Offer fitness activities, such as a lunch-hour yoga class or a fitness room

• Be understanding in the case of emergencies and extenuating circumstances, and allow for a limited paid leave in certain situations

• Set up an ergonomic office or business

• Consider job-sharing situations, where two people do one job by dividing up the tasks and splitting the schedule

• Pay for professional development seminars or courses

There are many things you can do to make your business the kind of place that attracts and keeps talented employees—and many of these perks won't cost you very much, if anything at all. It shows that you respect your people and want them to stay with your company for a long time. Planning company outings, hosting social gatherings, and buying lunch on occasion are all effective ways to build your business's family atmosphere.

While you can attempt to create an environment that will both attract and retain good workers, you can't be a social welfare provider. You deserve and should expect top performance from your employees. You are treating them as responsible adults and enabling them to make choices about their work habits. No matter how generous you are they owe you the highest level of productivity in supplying top-quality products or services to your customers. If the customers aren't satisfied, you will not have a company or employees to appreciate.